Microsoft launches its new Surface Laptop

Microsoft has launched a new version of its Surface Laptop today, bringing the base unit price down to $799. 

They quietly unveiled the cheaper Surface Laptop over at the Microsoft Store, and the new $799 variant ships with Intel’s Core m3 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. 

That makes the new base model slower and cheaper than the previous version at $999 that shipped with a Core i5 processor and the same low amount of RAM.

Windows Central says that

the cheaper Surface Laptop model now competes directly with Microsoft’s base Surface Pro model, which basically has the same specs.

Microsoft hasn’t revealed exactly why it’s introducing a cheaper model, but the launch comes just days after the software maker revealed its Surface revenue had only increased 1 percent year-over-year in the crucial holiday quarter. Microsoft launched its Surface Laptop, and refreshed its Surface Pro earlier in 2017, but both devices haven’t done a lot to help increase revenue over the popular holiday shopping quarter.

Pricing appears to be an important factor that could be holding back Microsoft’s Surface devices, particularly outside the US where pricing have gone up slightly.

A lower price would certainly help to increase the number of sales and revenue figures.